Since the invention of tools, men have had to carry them from place to place. The belt was identified early as an optimal place to carry items both for the hip's inherent load bearing ability as well as the quick access provided for weapons and tools. Today, a broad range of professionals still carry their equipment on their hips on a daily basis: police officers, construction workers, and soldiers to name a few. In both recreation and military load bearing, heavy backpacks typically offload significant amounts of weight to the hips in an effort to by-pass the spine.
As tools have become more capable, those who carry them have been required to carry more and more around their waist. However, there has been little advancement in the devices which actually hold the equipment to the user's waist. To this day, police officers wear a simple “Sam Browne” belt which, while heavily reinforced to carry the load, has little to no ergonomic shaping of any kind. As a result of this increased loading, those who bear it have found themselves compensating their posture to alleviate discomfort leading to chronic pain, nerve damage, circulation loss and spinal injury, as well as an increased risk for injury brought on by sudden movements.
Due to the body's natural “shelf” profile at the top of the gluteus muscle group, which is more pronounced at the spine and gradually reduces around the front and eventually disappearing at the front of the iliac crest, as a user loosened his/her loaded belt, it would begin to slip from that natural shelf starting at the iliac crest and moving backwards until the load was supported largely by the gluteus maximus muscle group and lumbar vertebrae. Under these conditions, the belt would begin to drop in the front and continue until it was tilted forward at a significant angle (sometimes as much as 20 deg from horizontal). In this condition, the belt exerts forward pressure on the lumber region of the spine, and causing a forward pitching moment around the pelvis. The user was then faced with the unfortunate choice of a belt continuing to roll the pelvis forward, eventually leading to “swayback,” a condition associated with forward rotated hips, or tightening the load belt further and further to keep it on the lateral muscle shelf under the iliac crest. Furthermore, it is known that pressure acting perpendicular to a muscles line of action inhibits the muscle's proper actuation. This is used in injury recovery to protect injured muscles from reinjuring themselves. In the case of belted load bearing, the belt puts pressure across the wearer's lumber area and abdominal column, heavily restricting the proper use of those muscles. This inhibits the muscles most critical in standing or sitting with correct posture, leaving the user more vulnerable to a slouched, hip-forward posture, amplifying the risk of sway-back.
Additionally, many of the components designed to carry individual components on a belt, as seen in a law enforcement officer's duty gear, have been designed with stiffness and rigidity in mind. But as the belt on which the components are strung is not rigid, each component has some limited range of motion over which it can move independently of the other components. As a result, by moving through different postures and positions, the wearer can be pinched, jabbed or otherwise hurt by these components. As many of these components have relatively sharp edges, they tend to dig in to the wearer causing loss of circulation, or rub causing calluses and bruising.
Prior art sought to solve the issue of an incorrectly loaded pelvis by unloading the pelvis entirely and loading the spine. Initially, this was accomplished using suspenders to move the load to the shoulders. While effective in alleviating the burden from the hips, suspenders have several disadvantages. First, in the case of law enforcement officers, the suspenders become a grab point which an adversary could get a hold of, to the detriment of the officer. Recent updates to the suspenders have enabled them to be worn under the user's clothes to prevent the tactical risk of exposed straps (Blackhawk & Back Defender). Second, suspenders load the shoulders and thus the spine, which defeats the purpose of taking advantage of the hip's natural load bearing ability. Third, prolonged activity in which the arms are raised, greatly increases fatigue as the shoulders must carry not only the arm and the tool in use, but the weight of the suspended load as well. Finally, during intense physical activity such as running, the weighted belt will tend to bounce up and down against the suspenders in response to the user's natural running motion, as the suspenders only restrict the belt from moving down past their own length, but do not secure the belt in a fixed location.
Another example of prior art sought to combat the lumbar pressure by inserting a large pad underneath the belt in the small of the user's back. This was to distribute the load over a larger area on the officer's back. While effective at its intended goal of local weight distribution, this prior art also had several deficiencies which prevented it from seeing widespread adoption. First, the excessively large pad interfered with vest-type body armor. Second, the device reduces pressure, but fails to fundamentally alter the load paths from the burden to the body, and so fails to eliminate the sway-back condition, or any of the pressure points on the lateral or anterior areas of the hips. Finally, a thick compliant pad makes an unstable platform for the equipment being worn, further decoupling the load from the wearer's body. This makes physical activity more awkward, and accessing the tools worn, for example, drawing a firearm, more uncertain as the holster or equipment container is not rigidly fixed to anything during the draw.
Another example of weight distribution on the hips is that of the padded belt. This is nearly universal in heavy backpacking, but has seen effectively no adoption in law enforcement due to the increased bulk, and the reduced stability of the objects carried. This prior art seeks to distribute point loads through thick padding, and does nothing to alter the load paths away from the spine and correctly to the lateral areas of the pelvis.
In light of the burden born by so many, and the inadequacy of the prior solutions, there is a need for a device which can correctly shape the load paths caused by a weighted belt worn around a user's waist, effectively distribute pressure points, relieve pressure from the spinal and abdominal muscle groups, provide a stable platform during strenuous physical activity or tool/weapon draw, and effectively link individual components of a multi-element load so they behave kinematically as a single mass.